Agreed.
Preferring not to know it lest it interfere with the story is one thing…but can you so easily put it aside and pretend it never happened once you do know?
Find a grave says she was cremated and her ashes scattered. So much for finding a grave to piss on.
Compartmentalizing. Bad people are capable of creating good art; good people are capable of creating bad art.
My very favorite author is Valerie Martin. I prefer her short stories, but her novels are also excellent, and I buy any book she writes as soon as I hear about it. I have succeeded in learning nothing about her private life except that she is from Louisiana and has (or had) at least one child, and Athena willing I’ll keep it that way forever.
Were it not that I had already inadvertently heard about MZB’s past, I’d never have opened this thread.
Thirded.
If I ever come across one of her books at a garage sale I’ll pay the $.25 and then take it home and burn it.
But no one has said that other people’s opinions should color your enjoyment. That is a charge you brought into the conversation specifically to reject. Which is a little weird.
By the time I saw Paul, he confined his smoking to outdoors. The last I saw him, I was heading home from the con (it was ten minutes from my house). He was outside the hotel lobby having a cigarette.
John Lennon beat his first wife, cheated on both his first and second wives, and basically was a deadbeat dad to his older son. I’m not going to stop listening to his music. Nirvana covered a few songs by Leadbelly, who was in jail for attempted murder, IIRC. I’m still going to listen to those songs.
And that’s what libraries and used book stores are for! 
It honestly doesn’t affect my desire to read her – which is really nil, since I read Mists of Avalon and wasn’t all that impressed. If I want to read fantasy, I much, much prefer Mercedes Lackey.
What about this: what if it was arranged so that all profits from the books were given to charities that helped abused children?
I’m also reminded of people who talk about how Tupac and Biggie were such great artists. IIRC correctly, wasn’t Tupac a rapist as well? I love my Steelers, but Ben Rothlisberger has been accused of sexual assault more than once, plus I’ve heard from various people (including family members who have hard run-ins with the guy) that he’s a total asshole in person. I’ll still root for my team. I believe in separating the art from the artist. If you feel differently, that’s fine. This is one of those “agree to disagree” areas, I believe.
Go back through history and you’ll learn the same thing – there are all KINDS of terrible people, who created great things. Would you avoid Planned Parenthood, since Margaret Sanger promoted eugenics, for example?
Rhymer Rule something-or-other forbids me to support a charity that way. If I think the charity is worth supporting, I just give 'em the benjamins directly rather than filter (and dilute) the funds through a retail purchase.
When I have learned after the fact that something I purchased was made by someone I find morally anathema, I usually donate what I paid to a relevant charity.
How often has this happened? Who were the morally anathemical persons?
I’m not actually sure if it’s the first, but the title of the book was “Darkover.” Somewhere in the first ten pages, she says something about how it might not be fair to blame all men for the wrongs that only some men commit, but that was the only way any social progress could be made, so that’s how it was going to have to be.
I no longer have a copy, so I can’t give you the exact quote or location, but it’s very early in “Darkover.”
As just noted, it was the book entitled “Darkover,” and was somewhere in the first few pages. It was a definite admission of practicing scapegoating. It even began with a somewhat conciliatory phrasing. “It may not be fair…” Something like that. It may not be fair to blame all men… But she quickly concludes that it is necessary to blame all men, and that was the point she lost me.
(Some men, yes! A great many men are misogynist shits. Even in this day and age, I hear some men saying it was a mistake to give women the right to vote! To me, that kind of sexist troglodytism is startling, and not a little horrifying. But not all men! Some of us really aren’t “the enemy.” Bradley’s method was to treat all men as enemies…even the ones who are taking her to dinner as the guest of a convention.)
I think I read a few of MZB’s books back in the dark ages, possibly the late 70’s, but I remember very little about them except that there was something off-putting about them. Possibly the misanthropy, possibly just the writing, but given the amount of SF and fantasy I was going through at the time, it must have been pretty bad. I do remember discussing her with a friend at the time; he had met her and had an extremely negative view of her.
So…not particularly surprised, no desire to go back and re-read the books, wish I’d never heard the whole sordid story.
That’s good to know. I was judging him too harshly, on the basis of only one encounter, and am happy to know it wasn’t truly representative.
I’d rather know good things about people than bad. I’ll tell you wonderful stories about Jack McDevitt or Timothy Zahn or Vernor Vinge. Absolute perfect sweethearts, nicest people you could ever hope to meet.
To me, there should be some barrier between the author and his work. I’ll shrug off some bad behavior. Jerry Pournelle used to push very hard at that boundary. Harlan Ellison crossed it. Orson Scott Card crossed it. But they had to work pretty damn hard at it, going above and beyond the call of assholery.
I went to high school with two people who lived (at least one of them still lives there) at Greyhaven and spent more than a few afternoons over there playing Champions. Met Paul (I knew him as Edwin The Berserk) and may well have met MZB.
Aside from it being a chaotic Berkeley SCA type place it didn’t seem odd or creepy…finding out about this stuff is just awful.
Never read any of her books although I think my sister did.
Most recently was Alex Day and the charity was RAINN.
RAINN, I know of. Alex Day I’d never heard of before your post, and the wikipedia page about him makes me weep for humanity. What exactly is he known to have done?
Coerced fans into sexual relationships.
What I got from the wikipedia page and his statement on tumblr was that he’d manipulated women into sex. That’s kind of iffy, and manipulation is not the same as coercion anyone. I was asking what particular thing Day is known to have done. Has he been arrested? Accused of a crime?